Lord Morton's mare
The mare by Lord Morton is a frequently cited example in the history of evolutionary theory . The domestic horse mare gave birth to the first hybrid with a quagga stallion. Then she was covered with horse stallions and brought more foals with stripes on their legs.
In a letter dated August 12, 1820, George Douglas, 16th Earl of Morton and member of the Royal Society , informed the President that he was trying to domesticate quaggas, a subspecies of the plains zebra . For this he mated his chestnut mare , which resulted in 7/8 Arabian thoroughbred , with a quagga stallion and received a hybrid foal. He then covered the mare twice in a row with a black house horse stallion. The two resulting foals had zebra crossings on their legs. The Royal Society published Lord Morton's letter in the Philosophical Transactions in 1821 .
In the same issue an essay of similar content appeared by Daniel Giles, Esq. He had a black and white domestic pig mated by a wild chestnut boar. The litter resembled partly the sow and partly the boar. The wild boar died. Then the sow was covered with a black and white boar. In the litter, however, there were again piglets with maroon spots.
These two reports seemed to support the telegony theory discussed at the time in Genetics . Charles Darwin cited the example of Lord Morton's mare in his major work On the Origin of Species from 1859 and in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868). The idea of telegonia states that a previous pregnancy can affect the phenotype of offspring from subsequent pregnancies in both humans and animals . This theory can be traced back to Aristotle and was discarded in the 1890s with the rediscovery of Mendel's rules . From today's perspective, the zebra crossing of Lord Morton's mare's foal was probably a recessive feature.
Individual evidence
- ^ A Communication of a singular Fact in Natural History , George Douglas, Earl de Morton, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Sections 20-22, Volume 111, 1821
- ↑ Particulars of a Fact, nearly similar to that related by Lord Morton, communicated to the President , Daniel Giles, Esquire, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Sections 23-24, Volume 111, 1821